“Be strong. Be strong Sally.”
“Mom?”
I hear the voice and turn my focus to the door. I see our eight-year-old Brandon standing in the doorway. He is looking into the room, hesitating to enter. I hear the repeat concern in his tone as he speaks to her again.
“Are you ok Mom?”
Sally turns and walks to our son. She picks him up and hugs him as she responds. “I’m fine baby.”
My vision fades to black and I hear the sound of the soft wind blowing around the void. My thoughts are not mine to control and when the blackness fades it takes several seconds for me to realize that I’m in the living room. I am lying on the floor near the couch my son sleeps on. Then there is a voice, a familiar eerie voice that blows across the dark living room.
“Feear. Feear me.”
I sit up and stare around. I see nothing. There is nothing here. I tell myself it is my imagination and then I feel them. Two hands grab my shoulders from behind and slam me to my back. I stare up but I’m too slow. I see only the shadowy image of the leg stomping down on my chest again and again as it lets out a loud high pitch roar. My vision fades and I wake.
I wake on the living room floor. I am in the now. I am on the floor beside the couch my wife sleeps on. I breathe heavy and my chest hurts. I try to stand but make it only to my knees. I know I can stand. I just have to move slower. I have to regain my focus. I can. I will. I am strong.
I yell out as I stand and I put my hand to my chest because the pain is great. My yell causes my wife to stir but she doesn’t wake. I see my son Brandon on the other couch and he shows no sign of hearing my yell. I’m not sure what happened. I’m not sure why I saw my wife crying or why she was crying. I am confused and reality is slamming into me. I need sleep. I take a deep breath and start into the kitchen then down the hall to the stairs. I will sleep and begin again tomorrow. When I’m upstairs in our room I see the digital clock in the darkness. Six A.M. is the time.
The next day I wake at Noon-thirty. Michael’s outside the bedroom door knocking and I hear his voice. It’s muffled and I can’t understand most of his words.
“Blaa blaa blaa up.”
“I’m awake!” is all I can yell. I roll over and sit up. I need to clear my head. I yell to him that I’m up and I hear him walking away. I know what I have to do.
Two hours, three phone calls from family members telling me how wrong I am, and two pots of coffee later, I’m back in the basement. I stare at the screen in front of me as the music from my headphones blends into my subconscious. I blink and suddenly I’m in my memory. It’s dark, and I’m sitting in the back seat of a car. I’m twenty in this memory.
There were four of us in that car. My younger brother, Joey, was sitting in the back beside me. In front of him was Luke. Luke he was the same age as Joey and he was one of nine that we hung out with. In front of me in the passenger seat was my older brother, Johnny.
Johnny was mean. He was a good guy deep down, but sometimes it was too deep for him to reach. At this time in life he was getting control of himself. He wasn’t partying as much and he was devoting more time to his family.
On this night Johnny was up from Kentucky, without his family. We had gone to a local club and had a boring time. None of us danced and none met a girl.
We’re at a stoplight waiting for it to change when we see a man at the gas station. The station was kind of behind us on the other side of the road. The reason we notice this man is because he was like seven feet tall and he was wearing a huge cowboy hat. He was a sight, but there was a car in the other lane that had two guys in it. They must have thought that we were laughing at them because they looked mad.
They pull up next to our car and start yelling. They call us names and tell us to pull over. We all exchange looks and ask each other if anyone knows them.
I saw it in Johnny’s eyes. He needed confirmation before he acted. I shook my head no and I didn’t protest when Johnny told Luke to pull into an upcoming gas station. I started taking my jacket off because I knew what was going to happen. I knew those two guys just thought that they were messing with some high school kids, but they were wrong. They had no idea about Johnny.
Luke pulls into the gas station and we wait until the other car does too. We watch them get out of their car and step forward with their hands in the air. I guess they were challenging us but to me they looked stupid.
Johnny turns to us all as he takes a ring from his left hand and places it on his right. He asks us again if we knew these guys and when we all said no, he opened his door.
We all get out of the car and start behind Johnny. We see the two guys with their hands in the air yelling to us. They were big, it was easy to see why they thought they could take us but they just misjudged Johnny. He was a man in his mid twenties who thought it was still cool to fight and he was good. There are some of us who, when we get hit in the chin we fall, our legs buckle and we collapse. There are others that don’t feel the pain until after the fight, which was Johnny.
We walked across the parking lot at a fast pace. What was to happen was going to be fast and we knew it. When we were about twenty feet away from them Johnny asked a question as he directs his attention to the biggest one. “Do you have a gun?”
“What if I do?” The bigger guy was taken aback by the question but he was quick to respond. What if I do? He sounded scared and I saw reality fill his eyes. He knew they made a mistake but it was too late.
“Better get it because you’re gonna need it!” Johnny stepped forward punching that big guy square in the jaw. Johnny was fast and he didn’t stop his attack. The guy stumbled backwards into his car and before he knew it, he was hit again and fell to the pavement. His trouble with my brother wasn’t over yet. Johnny was on top of him like the wind, punching the guy and he would’ve kept going but he stopped when he saw the other guy getting into it with Luke and me.
It was weird. Johnny attacked that guy so fast we were all kind of, watching. That wasn’t something we normally did, but it was kind of compelling, watching my older brother do his thing. Before I knew it there was yelling and charging as Johnny tackles the guy to the ground wrestling for position. It took all of a second for Luke, Joey, and I to swarm on the guy fighting my brother.
Three minutes later we’re walking back to the car. Behind us were two guys hurting because of a misunderstanding. We were looking at the tall cowboy, not them. One lying on the ground and the other was on one knee, trying to help his friend. Both were cut and the one on the ground was missing some hair. Those guys just made a mistake. They picked the wrong car, that’s all.
I pull away from the memory and return to the now. I’m sitting in front of the computer thinking, thinking about that night. We all make mistakes. In my life I have strong memories of people I hurt and by hurt I don’t mean physically. Mental pain is what I inflicted on people. People that did nothing wrong but trusted me.
Trust. That is a word that flashes many memories throughout my subconscious. I have given my trust to many and almost every time it resulted in something negative for me.
I accept the blackness and welcome a mind travel. I remember when my first girlfriend dumped me. I remember all seventy-two hours. It started on a Saturday morning. Her family was going to Pittsburgh for a day, I don’t remember why but they were. At first she wasn’t going with them and then she was. She was going to work in the morning and then catch up with them.
I knew it was weird, but I was like sixteen. I was still trusting. She never gave me reason not to trust. I asked her why she had changed her mind about going to Pittsburg.
I can’t. I can’t see. I have to stop. I’ll finish later. I need to rest my mind now. There is no choice for me, and if there is I don’t see it. I will rest my mind then I will return. That’s what I do.
I go upstairs and see Michael on the couch. He’s been working on a video game football team. I think for a couple hours I don’t know. My mind needs to rest is all I know. I
get a drink from the refrigerator then walk into the living room with Michael. I’ll rest my mind while we play a video game with our new team. That’s how I’ll rest my mind and though I’m not in the basement, I’m able to remember where I was at when I was typing. I know what I’m going to type next but not yet. I’ll keep my thought as I rest my mind playing football. Just a quick game, that’s it and then I’d go back to the basement and work.
That’s what we’re doing. We play the game and that’s when the phone rings. I know not to answer it but that’s something I can’t do. What if it’s an emergency? Got to answer the phone, right? It wasn’t. It was my mom.
She’s a funny woman who has more energy than anyone I’ve ever met.
So I’m sitting on the couch playing the game as I listen to my mom. She talks loud when on the phone. I can place it on the ground several feet away from my ear and I can still hear her words clearly.
Savannah is four years old and right now she’s with grandma. She’s supposed to spend the night with her but that’s not what the call was about. My mom starts telling me distracting words that steal my focus and ends my desire to work.
“I think something’s wrong with Savannah’s pee-pee. It’s a little red and she says it’s sore.”
My mom raised three boys so she knows nothing about girls. She just keeps talking and talking. Telling me her thoughts on how if Savannah would use the restroom that she’d feel better.
I have no idea what’s happening. Why? Why is she calling me and telling me this. I love my daughter but this, right now. Are you kidding? I tell her that I’ll have my wife call her when she gets home from work. I realized what I just said. Oh no, my wife. My wife is going to be home soon and I didn’t clean our room. I’m an idiot. I didn’t even get the thirty pages done on either story; they were pages and ideas I desperately wanted her to read. She’s going to be disappointed again. Why do I do this? What is this?
What? What is this? I don’t know. I only know that my Mom is still talking. I interrupt her and try to speak without rudeness in my tone.
“Mom, I’ll have Sally call you when she gets home. If you don’t want to wait then bring Savannah home.”
My mother and I talk for a few more minutes and the decision to do nothing is made. The call ends and I stare at Michael. He’s smiling because he could hear my mom from the other side of the couch.
Everything is so distracting. Why can’t I stay focused? I take a deep breath and my thoughts come under my control. Michael and I play to the end of our game and that’s when the phone rings. It’s my mom.
“Never mind honey. Savannah went to the bathroom and says that she’s fine now.”
I tell her I love her and that I’ll have Sally call her. I hang the phone up and turn to Michael. He’s still smiling.
I love that woman but she needs to slow down. That’s my Mom, super strong, super independent, and super distracted. Like me, right now. I’m distracted. I thought I was upstairs with Michael, playing the game, but I wasn’t. I’m not. That was earlier in the day. It’s nighttime and I’m in the basement.
I sit in my chair staring at my computer. I make a decision. I need an hour nap. I’ll wake and drink coffee. The night will begin and when everyone disperses to do their own thing later, I’ll come back to the basement. I will remember what I know.
It’s later. Its five hours later. And I’m in the basement again. My wife is asleep upstairs in the living room. I just saw her when I was getting my coffee, my second pot in an hour. Not healthy I know, but so what right. It doesn’t matter. Yes it does and I know what matters. Reality matters. Now, right now, I need to be strong.
I remember the first time I ever heard my Mom say a cuss word. At that moment she became the strongest person I’d ever seen. To this day that memory inspires me.
I played little league baseball and I was on the All-Star team. My Mom loved baseball and she loved winning but there was one thing she loved more than that, her children.
Our coach was Todd King. Coach King was a winning coach, a winning coach that everybody in that small town was afraid of. He was huge, and his temper matched his size. He knew the game but he was not kind to his players or to their parents.
We won our first two games and we won them with ease. I remember the night of the second game; Coach King said that he was sorry that he didn’t play everyone.
I was one of three kids that hadn’t played, so I wasn’t happy. I was good in baseball and the only reason I wasn’t playing was because of my size. I was small, and so were the other two kids.
The next night, in the first inning we take a five to nothing lead. Three more innings and four more runs later we have a nine point lead. The coach’s son, David was pitching and he was having a great game. He was fast and had good control. They couldn’t hit him. So this was it. One of the other two guys who didn’t get to play asked me if coach was going to play us. I said yes. The coach said he would, if we were winning and we were winning.
I stared into the crowd and saw my Mom and Dad. My Dad had an angry look on his face as he stared at the coach. My Mom was looking at me and I was smiling. I wanted to go in. I wanted to hit. Before every game my Mom would pitch me eighty pitches out in the field by our house. I was ready.
The fourth turned to the fifth and then to the bottom of the sixth. I turn to the crowd and I saw my Mom and Dad arguing. He stands up and leaves. Later I find out that he was in the parking lot pacing out his anger at the coach for not playing us. That’s how it was. No one stood up to Coach King. They all complained but never to him. This night was different.
My mother was in the stands, staring at the coach standing against the fence just inside the dugout. She walks down and stares at me inside and that’s when she snapped. She saw the look of disappointment on all three of our young faces. She was not going to let this happen.
My mom. My little five-foot mom charges up to Coach King and starts yelling. My mom never yelled but she was yelling now and when Coach King turned away from her she grabbed him. She reached up and grabbed that large man by the shoulder and spun him back around towards her.
“No! You don’t walk away from me! You are a son of a bitch Todd King! You promised those kids that they would play. You said if we were winning you’d play them.”
He tried to interrupt my Mom but she would have none of it.
“You’re going to listen to me. Those three may not be the best on the team but they are All-Stars and they deserve to play an inning after there is no chance of the other team coming back. You’re a son of a bitch, and she went on to say that twelve times. She told him that he shouldn’t have promised us that. She called him a bully, a joke, and when she was done, there was silence. The game had stopped and everybody was watching Mom and Coach King. It was funny. The next day he started and played all three of us the entire game. I know he wanted to pull us at the end but he didn’t.
In the bottom of the sixth we were down by two points and the batting order was down to the three small kids. I was second. The first kid gets a single. I get a double and he scores. The third kid gets a hit and I run as fast as my legs could carry me touching third and sprinting toward home plate. I don’t look back. I see the catcher ready for a throw and I slide, missing the tag and scoring the tying run. The next player hit the ball and the last of the three small players scored the winning run and the game was over. We started every game after that.
When I moved from Kentucky a few years later, first to Indiana and then here to Ohio, I tried-out for the eighth grade baseball team. I actually got cut from the team before I even swung a bat. The coach said I was cut and when I asked him why, he said that I wasn’t good enough. Not good enough was something I had never heard before.
“You’ve never seen me play”
“I can tell.”
“How?”
“You’re too small, I’m sorry.”
He said, too small. What was this guy doing? He had to be joking. He wasn’t.
>
I told everybody what happened and I thought my Mom was going to ‘Todd King’ him. She didn’t though. Her life was very distracting. She was learning a new job, trying to juggle a relationship after being in a twenty-year marriage that was miserable. The coach went unchecked. That summer I played in the summer league and that was the last baseball I ever played. I ended the season by missing the last game and letting my coach down. He was a good guy but I had an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up. It involved my cousins and girls.
I was fourteen and girls were all I could think about. You would have thought that it was the end of the world to my Mom. She kept telling me how I let my coach down but to me it was the right decision. My cousin and I were going with his Mom and one of her friends. His Mom’s friend had two daughters, and they were beautiful. One of them had thick beautiful hair that flowed to the center of her back.
That was a good time. We had our own hotel room and we had fun running the halls of the hotel at night. It was great, a good memory, but Mom was right I had let my coach down. Right now it’s not a good time. I stare at the computer wondering what I’m typing. I don’t know. I do know that I took a nap, woke, and then fought with my wife. Well, we didn’t fight we just, I don’t know how to say it. We didn’t yell, we just didn’t listen to each other but we recovered. We went upstairs and had our night with our friends, our friends that had been waiting for us in the living room while we worked things out.
I hope they understand that what I’m doing is mentally challenging. I know what we have in our possession. It has value. Potentially it has great value. We have a story that is good, better than or at least comparable to what is out there in the movie world. It’s huge and I mean grand. The Beginning of the End became a monster of a project and the end result was unbelievable. It truly is a grand story that has adventure, drama, horror, action, love, hate, trust, betrayal, faith, deception, life, and death.
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